


"Work Experience"

by unbelievable2



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, The Sentinel Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-13 23:24:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9146629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unbelievable2/pseuds/unbelievable2
Summary: AU. What happens when you cross a protester on the run with a Santa in a daze?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bluewolf458](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/gifts).



> This story was written for the wonderful TS Secret Santa exchange over on LJ. My recipient, who I believe likes AUs, also hoped for a Gen story, with a focus on character interaction and a happy ending.

"I'm telling you, Janey," said Blair Sandburg, with a nervous look at the growing crowd of students around him. "I am completely okay with a peaceful protest, but I don't get the feeling you've got a lid on this one."

There were a lot of earnest-looking kids around him, many bearing placards which read things like "Stop Child Labour!" and "No More Sweat-Shops!". However, as they marched up to the Mall entrance, which was lit up by brightly coloured lights and had canned Christmas carols blaring forth, more and more people seemed to be latching on to the crowd. Not all of them, it seemed to Blair, looked like students. And not all of them looked as earnest and caring as the others.

"Blair," chided Janey, "are you losing your principles, now you’ve got your stipend? Really, I'm disappointed in you. We are going to have a peaceful protest inside, and that's the whole story. I'm just glad so many people feel the way we do."

 _No,_ thought Blair, _you're just being naïve. And I really don’t need 'participant in riot' added to my academic résumé._

"I haven't sold out!" he protested, though feeling slightly guilty just the same. "It's just…"

"It's just you’re feeling we might embarrass you, right? If you can't stand the heat, Blair, you know where to go. And don’t think about coming round to my place in future if you do."

Blair swallowed. Janey was really nice. He really liked Janey.

"Okay, but keep an eye on these new guys, okay?"

They marched on through the portals of the Cascade Supermall. Immediately, they caused a stir; shoppers were staring, and he could see security guards talking hurriedly into their radios.

"Okay," shouted Janey through her bullhorn, "everyone head for Level One, as agreed." Level One was where the majority of the clothing stores were situated, and the plan had been to start a sit-in protest there until the Mall owners agreed that they would no longer stock clothing that had been made by exploited child labour. 

Blair, egged on by hormones in this instance, rather than a pure regard for the cause, looked uncomfortably at his fellows in the group, who by and large were wearing just the sort of clothing that was likely to have been produced in such overseas factories. He privately rehearsed his argument again, about why the situation around child labour was far from clear-cut – if a child was the only breadwinner in the family, wasn't it better to allow them to work as long as their working conditions were properly controlled and some education was given? What if…

He was jolted out of his reverie by a swirl in the crowd around him. _Oh brother_ , he thought, _I've been really dumb to get involved in this. The whole board of governors is going to want my ass in a sling. I'll be busted back to Teaching Assistant…_

Now they were on Level One, part of the group was breaking away, grazing the nearby fashionable menswear stands and picking up items quite freely. Store assistants ran after them, only to recoil at the mass hostility they encountered. Janey was yelling through the megaphone, begging her followers to behave properly, but to no avail. She started to cry.

"This is all your fault!" she shouted at Blair. He boggled.

"My fault? Me? How do you work that out?"

"You've been undermining my authority from the start! That's why they’re not listening to me. I never want to see you again!"

And to make matters worse, Blair could now hear another bullhorn , one wielded by the Mall security guys.

"Everyone stop right now!" bellowed the security megaphone. "Stop right now! Drop everything you've taken and you won't be arrested! Stop right now!"

From the corner of his eye, Blair could see blue lights. He turned and looked out of the Mall windows– cops in the parking lot. Oh, great. The crowd, in the meantime, did nothing to cease and desist. Before he could decide what to do, a phalanx of cops barrelled into the building, and all hell broke loose.

Blair's mind was made up for him. He was not proud of himself, but he quickly reasoned this was no longer his fight. If he had been sensible, it would never have been his fight in the first place. So Blair ran.

He dodged through some security guards, who seemed to be happy to go for the students rather than the looters, and dashed into another clothing store, one guard doggedly following him. This time, the store was womenswear. He feinted right and left between the stands of clothing, then on a whim ran to the rear of the store and in through the changing rooms; thankfully empty as everyone was watching the show outside, or running for cover.

His first thought was that he had chosen a dead end. His stomach lurched. Goodbye, stipend. Goodbye, academic reputation… He madly rifled through the lines of clothing returned by customers as unsuitable, looking for a hiding place, and saw a door. Not a large door; maybe something for maintenance. He wrenched it open and climbed in, pulling it shut behind him. He hoped the clothes outside would stop swinging quickly.

Through a little gap between the door and the plasterboard wall, he could see the guard prowling the changing rooms, panting heavily. Not in good condition, thought Blair. And not that dedicated, either, as the guy shrugged and walked out again, back to the fray.

Blair, with a little sigh of relief, considered his options. Wait a while and leave? But what if women came back in? He saw the headlines now – _"Peeping-Tom Prof Arrested"_. He'd better try to slip out now.

Nope, the door wouldn't open. He pictured himself hammering on it until he was dragged out, humiliated in front of offended women trying to get dressed. The same headline applied.

And it would be _Goodbye, stipend,_ all over again.

He shuffled round and realised that he wasn't in a cupboard. It was some kind of service tunnel. There was cabling and water-pipes on either side. _It's gotta come out somewhere,_ he thought. And hopefully somewhere far, far away from Janey's failed protest. He wondered if she would rat on him, and concluded that yep, she would.

There were various side tunnels to follow, but he went straight ahead, using his cell-phone light to guide his way. He reasoned that heading for a diametrically opposite point in the Mall would have the advantage of getting him the furthest away from the protest. Where he could emerge, hopefully unseen, from some other maintenance hatch with a vague story about why he'd got stuck there in the first place. Oh, yeah, terrorised by the protesters, and harassed by a crazy security guard who had targeted Blair as a miscreant, leaving Blair with no option but to find the nearest hiding place. 

_Yeah, that might work._

He started moving faster, encouraged by his plan. Far ahead, he could see a chink of light - maybe it was the other end of the tunnel and he was going to appear on the far side of the Mall. He sped up, running the phone light across the ground in front of him. Less than ten yards in front of the door, he pulled up in shock. Lying slumped against the tunnel wall was a Santa. A dead Santa. Blair almost dropped his phone. His heart leapt into his throat. 

_Oh man, I've never found a dead guy before, and … what the hell? He's a Santa? What kind of bad dream is this, for Pete's sake?_

He approached cautiously, shivering slightly, but then something… something told him that the guy wasn’t dead. Blair crouched down and gently touched the man's arm. Then joggled it.

"Buddy, you asleep?"

Maybe a sozzled Santa from the grotto, sleeping it off? There was no response.

He joggled some more, then felt the guy's face. He was warm and vital, but quite unconscious.

"Hey, man! Come on, man, wake up! What's wrong with you?" He shook the guy's shoulders, and the red coat fell open slightly to reveal a blue jacket bearing a Cascade PD crest. There was a gold badge on the man's belt.

Wondering whether he had gone from frying pan to fire, Blair took the guy's hand in his, and started to chafe it.

"Come on, man, listen to my voice. You wanna wake up for me? Come on, wake up, man."

As he did so, he absently put his eye to the crack between door and wall, just as he had done in the changing-rooms. He could see gleaming cabinets and sparkling items – oh, right, a jewellery store. Well, at least it wasn’t lingerie.

A sudden movement caught his eye, and his heart leapt into his throat once again. The store assistants had their hands held high, and a man wearing a stocking mask was holding a gun on them while another masked man rifled the cabinets. The alarm bells were ringing but, hell, alarm bells were ringing all over the Mall by now. This was the thieves' lucky day; the entire Mall security force would be dealing with Janey's protest.

He turned back to the prone cop.

"Come on, man! I need to you to wake up! Come on, please, please…."

The man groaned a little, and his eyelids flickered.

"Yeah, that right, that's it! Come on, buddy! There are robbers here! You’re a cop! You’ve got to wake up!"

And he'd thought the University had weird assignments for their staff – this wasn't work experience he'd expected to see a cop doing. Not dressed as a Santa, hiding in a tunnel.

"Come on, you’re almost there! Come on, man, hurry!"

The man's eyes snapped open.

"Who the hell are you?" he ground out, in a hoarse voice.

"Not important, man! There are two guys robbing the jewellery store, right outside! They've got guns!"

"Goddammit," muttered the cop, "it happened again!" He pulled himself upright, and Blair saw he was a big guy, tall and well-built. The big cop pressed his eye to the gap by the door. "Okay, stand back, Chief. Stay here" Then he raised his voice.

"Cascade PD! Put down your guns!"

Which must at least have fazed the robbers somewhat, thought Blair, to hear a talking wall. Then the big cop simply kicked open the door and leapt out, letting the light flood in. Immediately there were two shots, and a cry. Blair scrambled out, ignoring his instructions, to see one of the robbers writhing on the floor, clutching his shoulder. The other had dropped his gun and had his hands up.

"Well, if you’re already here, Chief," said the big cop over his shoulder, "take the cuffs from out my back pocket and put them on the one still standing." Blair boggled slightly at the order, but nevertheless extracted the cuffs gingerly from the cop's jeans (having to delve into the red trousers to do so) and went over to the second robber. The guy cooperated easily, and was now openly sobbing.

"It wasn't my fault!" he kept saying. "He talked me it into it! He said it would be okay! I'm gonna lose my job over this!"

 _You and me, both_ , thought Blair. By the time he had finished, the cop had taken the two guns, had reported in by radio, and was padding the injured guy's shoulder with his Santa jacket. Then he straightened up and leaned back against a cabinet, grinning at Blair, his light blue eyes twinkling.

"Nice work, Chief. I have to thank you for that."

"Are you okay?" asked Blair walking over, genuinely concerned. He lowered his voice. "I mean, you were unconscious in the tunnel."

"Oh, man." The cop's mood changed. "This has been happening to me lately. Started when I'd been on a long stake-out, on my own. Now, it can come up on me and catch me unawares. Sometimes I can barely function. Everything is wrong, my head hurts, everything hurts. Then others, I kind of black out. My Captain is at the end of his tether. He refused to believe my tip-off about this jewellery heist today, which is why I had no back-up."

"The Santa suit?" ventured Blair. The big cop made a face.

"So I could blend in and get behind the scenes more easily. I wasn't really supposed to be here." He sighed heavily. "I'm gonna be put on long-term sick-leave, I just know it. To be honest, I'm really worried there's something seriously wrong – something incurable or something neurological, you know? But, so far, the doctors say they can't find anything."

Blair frowned.

"And you say things feel weird. Do you find you can see and hear things differently to how you used to? Smell and taste, even? Everything's kind of enhanced?" The cop looked at him suspiciously.

"Yeah. How do you know that?" Blair was just warming up.

"Maybe - I don't know – say, maybe extra touch-feely?"

"Now, just a minute, Junior!" Blair put his hands up in surrender.

"Okay, don’t blow a fuse! It's just I've come across people like you before, in my studies…"

"Studies?" growled the cop.

"I'm an anthropologist, at Rainier," insisted Blair, adding mentally _'for the moment, at least'_. "There's nothing wrong with you. In fact, there's a lot very right with you. I suspect you have exceptional senses - all five of them, I'm guessing - and I think you've lost control of them a tad."

"Oh, more than a tad," sighed the cop. "Hey, do you think you could help me? Talk to my Captain? Do you know of any way I can keep on working?"

"Oh, yeah," replied Blair eagerly, all thoughts of his official University work fleeing from his mind. "Oh, yeah, I have loads we can talk about. I could…."

A body of security guards was approached, and one of them was Blair's nemesis from womenswear. Blair turned to the cop.

"What's your name, man?"

"Ellison. Detective Jim Ellison."

"Pleased to meet you, Jim. I'm Blair Sandburg. Dr Blair Sandburg. And I could do with a little _quid pro quo_ , right about now…..


End file.
